Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 16, 1993 TAG: 9308160069
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: HARRISONBURG LENGTH: Medium
On three occasions since December, a group of administrators from JMU traveled to rival schools for undercover observations of such things as campus security and food service operations.
JMU officials mostly remained undercover throughout their visits, although in at least one instance security officers knew the group was on campus, a participant and university sources said.
The visits resembled corporate espionage missions, where employees of one firm do not identify themselves when visiting a rival. The practice is common in the business world, but startling in a university setting, according to observers of higher education.
"All that just for a report on food service?" asked University of Maryland spokesman Roland King when told the group had visited his campus. "The fact is, the U2 committee could have called us up and said we'd like to visit your campus and look at your facilities, and we would have done everything we could to expedite that."
"I don't know what to make of it," said Eileen Wagner, a Richmond lawyer and former university official who specializes in education issues.
Wagner said she had never heard of a similar case. "It's people snooping around other people's business when they're not invited," she said. "I can't imagine why they would go to all that trouble."
JMU Assistant Controller John F. Knight titled his Feb. 24 report on the Maryland trip "Results of University of Maryland Spy Operation."
Knight and other JMU officials responsible for a variety of campus operations did not tell Maryland administrators they were coming, Knight said.
"We wanted to see how different things work on different campuses and bring those ideas back to JMU," Knight said in an interview.
Knight said there was no intent to deceive Maryland officials, and terming the visit a "spy operation" was "more of an internal jest."
Once on campus, Knight's group informed Maryland campus security they planned to look around, he said.
"The U2 Committee has enclosed a copy of a report regarding our observations at the University of Maryland," Knight wrote in a cover letter to JMU Senior Vice President Linwood H. Rose. The report contained a Top 10 list of observations, including well-designed security features and courteous staff.
By being anonymous, JMU officials got a truer picture of the way both visitors and students are treated at other campuses, Rose said.
"I think if you identified yourself and said we'd like a tour of your campus, you'd obviously get a different perspective," he said. "The point here is to not draw any special attention to yourself."
Maryland's King conceded that point.
"True, someone might be treated differently if it was known they were an official from another institution," King said.
Rose said whenever he visits other campuses for official business, he makes a practice of wandering the campus anonymously, and assumes other university officials do the same at JMU.
"This might be different, I suppose, because it is a more organized thing," he said. JMU has not decided whether to continue the visits, he said.
The committee's name, which comes from the Cold War-era U2 spy planes, and the cloak-and-dagger tone of its reports "was just having fun," Rose said. "It emerged from just the notion of doing some reconnaissance of an area."
In its report, the committee of two men and three women that visited Maryland Feb. 4 and 5 said they made a videotape and took several photos. The group collected pamphlets, class schedules and other materials for review at JMU.
James Madison, a state-funded school in Harrisonburg, also sent a U2 team to Penn State University this spring and to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in December.
The trips were inexpensive, Rose said. Four or five people went; they took a college van and incurred only hotel and meal costs, he said. He did not have a cost total.
by CNB